


What Dreams May Come

by Nonsuch



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Complete, Drama, F/M, Fantasy, Obsession, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 02:05:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonsuch/pseuds/Nonsuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Goblin King has been playing games with the Molloy family for five hundred wearisome years. Linda Molloy is every bit as frustrating as her dull, uninspired ancestors until she produces a daughter – Sarah. Sarah shows promise. Sarah deserves something more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

The Molloy line is finally drawing to a close; with it, the game is reaching its final stage. I must say that I’m glad. It has worn on several centuries too long. I am tired of this family and its disappointments. The Molloys have mostly led petty lives, which are – of course – the worst kind. Most of them have simply been too dull or detestable to steal away.

Linda Molloy has just fallen pregnant by a certain Robert Williams: a polite, well-mannered and supremely dull junior accountant. I’ve seen the fear in their faces; there is no doubt they will marry. Still, that is irrelevant: by timing and by blood, this child is a Molloy.

I hope it is a pretty child. Now Linda is older, her beauty is harsher. She was all sweetness and softness once, and I have no liking for what she has become. I can’t bring myself to lust for her anymore; I only feel a remote, even intellectual curiosity. It is a shame, really.

When they start to know too much (or think they do), humans cease to imagine. Their minds become dull and rigid, like clay left to bake in the sun. In effect, they cease to be fun to play with. Their lives pivot around laughably petty concerns: bills, mortgages and pay-rises. I have no idea why humans wish to survive childhood, to grow up. They must see the spiral of mundanity and misery that awaits them.

I have a second hope – that this child will inherit the quality of innocence its mother has now lost. It is no great request – most of the Molloy children have had some level of guileless enchantment to them, however fleeting. If fortune sides with me, I may get to keep this one. It would be a memento – pleasant or disquieting, I cannot yet say – of a game fully played out, and now drained of all enjoyment. The other players dropped from the board long ago. I am the only one to remain. It would be an exceedingly lonely game were it not for the pawns.  
I am no clairvoyant, but I know that this will be the last Molloy child – they’ve already begun looking at rings.

 

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I was present at the birth, though no one could see me. I felt obligated to be there; my duties to humans are so few now the lines entrusted to me have decayed and mostly ended in extinction. My presence was the humblest gift I could have offered, for Linda and her child are the only humans that remain in my life. I intend to keep them close.

Linda was vocal throughout the process, puffing and screeching when not breathless from the pain. I paid particular attention to her red, swollen hand, clenched tight around the metal frame of the hospital bed; her wedding ring seemed primed to burst from her finger.

Her husband was cut off from the proceedings, banished to a waiting room in another wing of the hospital. I was glad for his absence. His name will follow the child’s, but it is an empty token: this child is a Molloy, and, by extension, it is mine. The child will never fully be his, though neither of them will ever truly appreciate why.

The child wasn’t screaming when it arrived, almost as if struck dumb by the shock of its emergence. It only began to wail after it had been cut free, wrapped in a blanket and handed to its mother.

“You have a beautiful baby girl, Mrs Williams.”

I almost laughed at the inanity of the words, but suppressed the urge to lean forward and examine the child properly. It had a surprising amount of hair, black and wet with blood and fluid. It showed no trace of beauty. Its face was badly bruised, and resembled nothing so much as a screeching fist. It was impossible to perceive anything in it but hunger and distress.  
I left before the father could arrive, before I even heard mutters of a name.

I trust that time will refine her.

 

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They named her Sarah. I was disappointed at first, for there are so many excellent names from the Molloy line they could have chosen: Aoife, Regan, Myrna. The Molloys have mostly made bad choices, but they cannot – for the most part – be faulted in the naming of their children. Sarah is nonetheless preferable to Linda: such a dull, commonplace name. It has staying power.

She is a year old now, and is proving quite the delight. She is babbling, and can take a few shaky steps before she falls. I have yet to interfere; I merely observe and watch her grow. She is strikingly different from Linda, who was a solemn and obedient child. Sarah is naughty, thrillingly so. She has a habit of clambering onto the coffee table in the lounge and empting the fruit bowl of its contents, occasionally taking experimental bites. She has learned how to balance on her toes and turn door handles, removing what once proved insurmountable barriers to her explorations. She can climb the stairs and infiltrate her parents’ bedroom. She once turned out her mother’s make-up draw and had a go at applying some of the instruments of beautification to her fair, chubby face. She was left with red stripes across her forehead and blue, glittering patches on her cheeks. She would make an excellent goblin, were she to be turned now. I would say not turning her was a waste, if my plans for her were not greater.

The only objects she seems to care for are books. She has an abundance of them due to her father’s parents, a kindly and fawning couple who keep her extravagantly indulged. She talks to her books in a way she never talks to her mother, cooing softly and murmuring litanies of nonsense as she turns their thick, heavy pages.

Linda was never meant to be a mother. I would have been able to point this out, if my presence had been known and the question had been posed to me. She was a quiet and self-contained child, but that was only because her parents were dead and she was alone in the world and helpless. I don’t think any of the adults around her fully appreciated it, but Linda was faultlessly good and silent because she feared being left with nothing. Her aunt – her mother’s sister – was all she had. The aunt was a strict woman who raised the child from a rule-book. If Linda had disappointed her aunt, what was to keep her from being turned out? Nothing, thought Linda – who was a perpetually downcast and grey-complexioned child. There were moments when I felt pity for her, but they never lasted.

Her aunt is now dead. Linda has no reason to continue submitting to her rules, which were built around humility, demureness and the deep sinfulness of pride.

I will not deny that Linda was briefly intriguing as an adolescent, with colour in her cheeks and careless laughter on her lips. She is harder now, empowered by ambition and knowledge of her beauty. Her priorities have changed, and Sarah is not among them; I doubt she ever was.

To be truthful, I may have played a role in reorientating Linda’s interests. I may have arranged for a set of circumstances that led her to her school’s drama club. I may have arranged a chance encounter with a retired actress, who smiled at her kindly and said she had potential.

Little Sarah is left with baby-sitters while her mother receives relentless coaching in Shakespeare and Ibsen and harangues theatrical agents in New York. She was a member of Westport’s repertory theatre during her pregnancy, but no more. That is beneath her now. She is looking steadily towards the city.

Shockingly, everything is going according to plan. It makes a pleasant change.

 

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Events have taken a dramatic turn; admittedly, this is due to my intervention. Linda proved surprisingly unwilling to take decisive action and leave her husband and her child for good. The lure of culture and fame embodied by New York was not, in itself, enough. Since she lacked the necessary courage, it fell to me to take Linda Molloy from her family.

Now, my people are known for their charisma. A favourite recollection of mine is having charmed the seventy-five year old Queen Victoria into gifting me a necklace I had coveted for several thousand years, originally from a hoard of Byzantine treasures. Upon my arrival at Balmoral, she threatened me with guards and had to be hushed. When the time came for me to depart, I had to turn down her ardent offer of tea, Battenburg cake and a guest suite for the night.

Compared to such an obstinate and intractable creature, Linda was too easy. It was no sport simply because there was no challenge involved. I merely had to smile at her from across the street for her to stop and stare back at me, puzzled and flattered. A few hours later, I rushed into her as she left her acting coach. I helped her up from the floor, apologising profusely and taking immense care over the delivery of my vowels.

“Hey, I think I’ve seen you. You were smiling at me from across the street.”

“I was. It’s rare to see such a beautiful girl in Westport.”

She beamed, and moved her handbag to cover her wedding band. I smiled, and the expression was only half directed at her.

Humans are easy to manipulate, as long as the manipulator has a firm goal in mind. I was soon surrounded by an organically expanding web of theatrical contacts: agents, actors, critics. I drew Linda into their world with me; she found the effortless glamour of it all intoxicating. She was in awe of me, her grip on my arm cutting as if she needed to reassure herself of my reality. My first performance was met with extravagant praise, which gave me a twinge of satisfaction. Acting presents no challenge to me. I can absorb all the lines I need upon making contact with a script, and can emote with ease for performance is the essence of my being.

I am reasonably proud of my romance with Linda, which is something of a minor modern accomplishment. I was tender and sympathetic when we first made love; I held her close as she sobbed about the indignities of life as a domestic housewife, of the restrictions put upon her by her husband. I was intrigued by what she omitted; in particular, she never mentioned a child. It was as if Sarah did not exist – or if she did, she was deemed utterly irrelevant to our conversations.

My interest in Linda is perfunctory, a small part of a long game. Still, passion proved surprisingly easy to feign. While I feel no lust for Linda, neither do I feel revulsion for her form (for it is not unlovely). I look upon her and my feelings are as a vacuum. My indifference is effectively a blank canvas, easily covered by pretty words and ardent gestures. Linda is warm and receptive to me, almost girlish. Her pure, unfettered smiles bring back honeyed memories of her youth; they are vague and fleeting, but pleasant and easy to embrace for as long as they remain.

Sarah and I came face-to-face for the first time when I arrived at her mother’s house at midnight, to spirit Linda away. Neither Linda nor I intended for Sarah to see us, and only I was aware that she did. She must have been awoken by our voices, for she left her room to kneel by the banisters at the top of the stairs and watch us. She must have sensed that something forbidden was unfolding, for she showed no sign of moving down the stairs. I was transferring Linda’s bags from a cupboard into the hall when I saw her. Her gaze was direct. Betrayed. I felt myself falter, and the bags I had been holding slipped to the floor. Her eyes appeared strangely large and liquid, glowing in the weak light emanating from the lounge. Her small face was brilliantly pale despite the darkness that filled the upper floor of the house. I felt an uncharacteristic stab of regret.

I held her gaze as I murmured a few words that made her stand, turn and return to her room. I snatched her memory of me. I gave her a long and heavy sleep. It was a mean gift, but the only one it was in my power to offer.

Sarah cried the next morning when she woke to find her mother gone. She continues to cry, generally at night after her father has tucked her into bed and stroked her fine, black hair.

I have seen to it that her grandparents buy her a particular book to distract her. I felt it appropriate to write her a story about a young girl of great and unfathomable power.

Now all she needs is a sibling.

 

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The more time I spend with Linda, the more I appreciate how right I was to put several thousand miles between her and her daughter. The seeds of corruption were sown long ago, but they are truly rooted now. You would never guess she had a child. She dresses as if she were eighteen, and passes Sarah off as her niece (“my sister’s older, you see, much older”) whenever the poor child is flown to us for a visit. Sarah never complains, her devotion to her mother stupid and unshakeable. I make a point of being present whenever Sarah is sent to her mother, serving as chaperone, guide and protector. I would not trust Linda alone with her.

Sarah seems very much an orphan in our company, and views neither Linda nor me as her parent. Her mother is too far-off for that in her eyes, too beautiful and too accomplished. Too absent. I, on the other hand, am far too charming to be any sort of father. I walk with her arm-in-arm along the beach, and we’ve been known to throw our shoes onto the sand and paddle together in the sea as the sun sinks. She enjoys my company, laughing wildly at my jokes and begging for stories of London and Berlin. I tell her accounts of my history repackaged as fairy-tales: I am a wandering knight, a lovelorn prince, a captive king. Her eyes widen when I speak, and her wonderment grows with every word that leaves me. She is a source of endless delight.

She is proving a thoroughly different child from her mother: bright and lively. Linda passed from quiet submission to bold rebellion almost overnight, leaving no space for nuance or shade.

Sarah, by contrast, is a human kaleidoscope – she overflows with colour and energy, and is forever shifting. Her moods are always felt with passion. Despite all she had suffered, her imagination flourishes: she writes crude, self-pitying stories that she proceeds to act out with all the appropriate flourishes. I direct her, variously offering incisive criticism and generous praise.

She is eleven now, and has already far exceeded her mother in beauty. Her eyes are light, and they glitter enchantingly in the sun. I have written many lines of poetry on the subject, though I am content with none. I am nothing if not a perfectionist.

Linda dislikes discussing Sarah in the child’s absence, and when Sarah is visiting Linda either leaves her with me or arranges for us to embark on activities that require only a minimal level of socialisation: the cinema, concerts, the theatre. Every cruel look and jealous glance intensifies my disgust, heightening my desire to take Sarah away.

Linda has made no secret of her jealousy. Adults should envy children, but not in the way Linda envies Sarah. No, there is no trace of wistfulness in the glares she shoots her daughter. Only unease and perhaps a mild panic. She fears being superseded, unaware she was dethroned the moment the child came into existence.

Linda has taken to discussing her male co-stars with me, and in particular dwells on their physical attractiveness: their bodies; their fine, piercing eyes; their strong and masculine voices. I can hardly summon up the necessary energy to respond to her. I find her pitiful, her efforts to inspire lust and envy in me wearisome.

Sarah never talks about home; nonetheless, I know exactly what is happening. Her father is engaged to his secretary – a blonde and vapid woman who stands in absolute contrast to Linda, both in demeanour and appearance. She is steady and reliable, while Linda is skittish and impossible to trust. She is blonde and inoffensive, while Linda is dark and bold. If forced to choose between two such women, I would always choose the latter; nothing is worse than a dull human. While I loathe Linda, she remains capable of inspiring the occasional moment of passion.

My feelings for the secretary are irrelevant. All that matters is that she has a child. A perfect, adored child for Sarah to despise.

 

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Sarah has a brother now, and I adore the emotions he has brought out in her – she is so hateful towards him! It is true passion, and I find it exhilarating in her. It must, of course, be kept in check (the time for abandon is not yet here), but the book I gave her will assist with that. While it teaches young girls of their power, it also teaches them of their responsibilities towards helpless, infant siblings.

Yes, everything is going excellently. I could not ask for more than this. All of the pieces are on the board now. I doubt Sarah will even need a push to make the wish.

The only stumbling block is Linda. She is no longer part of the plan; her usefulness has run dry. I will most likely abandon her, but not yet; Sarah will be visiting again next month, and I will need to be there to ask appropriately prodding questions about Toby.

(It’s such an offensively _sweet_ name. I can taste the cloying rot of it in my mouth to speak it.)

At the moment, Linda is throwing herself into passionate love affairs with younger (that is to say, younger by several thousand years) men. She kisses them quite openly, and while initially content for photographs of the trysts to appear in the tabloids, she now brings her lovers home. On the rare occasions I am present during their lovemaking, I ignore them: I read a book or pen a song for Sarah.

The last incident of this nature was particularly farcical, for Linda strode downstairs in her underwear with tears streaming down her face. “Don’t you care, you asshole? I’m, screwing Johnny Wilcox in our bedroom and you’re acting like I’m hosting a garden party!”

I peered up, mildly annoyed. “Linda, I’ve always told you: you are free to do as you wish. I don’t want to limit you.”

Linda pivoted and stormed upstairs, slamming the door shut behind her. With hindsight, I’m surprised she didn’t leave it open so I could listen.

I have ceased to use any active enchantments on her, yet she remains with me. I have no idea why. The only words to pass between us are laced with indifference, spite or disgust. The only evidence of Linda’s love for me lies in her gaze, which turns tremulous and feeble when she looks at me too long. My form was crafted to be handsome, and in Linda’s case, it seems to have muzzled logic and produced a solid and unshakeable attraction. I fear my form may have been crafted a touch too well.

Sarah has developed a worrying habit of emulating her mother. I can see Linda’s mannerisms in her smallest movements, in particular her pout. I will have to discourage such imitation; it can only corrupt her. Sarah will not share in her mother’s depravity.

I’m sure I worry for nothing. Sarah could have no better guardian than I, and no better future.

 

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Sarah cried in my arms tonight. “They’re horrible. They were awful before, but they’re ten times worse now. It’s like I’m invisible.”

It is her fifteenth birthday today (albeit just barely, for it is close to midnight now). She chose to wear her new silk dress when we went out. I had helped Linda choose it – it was a pale blue evening gown. Sarah crowed with delight when she first touched the fabric.

Her mother remained at the private club where we’d had Sarah’s birthday meal. I saw a glint in Linda’s eye as we were finishing desert. She abandoned her strawberry cream tart and kissed both Sarah’s cheeks smartly before departing for the table of a mildly influential Hollywood producer. Sarah – poor, tear streaked Sarah – and I were left alone. I took her home, leading her to the black Mercedes by the hand. I couldn’t stop her looking back at the club as we drove away; it is not yet in my power to control who she loves.

“Well, you should make them realize your presence.” I found it interesting that she chose to focus on the injustices she experienced at home, rather than the indignity she had just been subjected to by her mother.

“How?” She sniffed loudly, shifting away from me and leaning back heavily against the sofa. She looked ahead pointedly.

“Merely do what you do best.” There was a trace of a smile in my voice.

She glared, detecting my amusement. “Say what you mean.”

“I already have. Tell me Sarah – what do you do best?”

She took a few long moments to assemble a reply. “Act, I suppose. My stories are terrible. I hate them all now. They seem so _stupid_.” Her voice broke with the last word, threatening a fresh flood of tears.

“There is nothing wrong with your stories,” I lied smoothly as I reached out to touch her shoulder, freezing when she jerked away. I called upon every ounce of self-discipline I possessed to keep my voice measured and calm. I desired her to be close, but knew it was not yet the time to force her proximity. “It is merely that your acting is superior. You should deploy your talents, Sarah. Show them how little you care for them. Follow your dreams, and they will come.”

She nodded, and sniffed in the ugly, crude manner of a small, snot-stuffed child. She summoned a feeble smile as she thanked me, and I reached for her hand. I was pleased when she allowed me to take it, stroking my thumb over her knuckles. “Your dreams will come, Sarah. Trust me.”

We passed the rest of the evening in silence, requiring nothing besides each other’s company. It was perfection.

 

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And so events have taken still another turn. She made her wish. For the first time, I have greeted Sarah in all my splendour. She has now seen me as the Goblin King. It was amusing to watch her and see how her tear-stained face crumpled in puzzlement as she surveyed me. If she knew me through the glamours and the powder, her stubborn human logic kept her from fully recognising the truth.

I have not been entirely honest on my motives for giving Sarah a book; it was not merely meant to teach her a moral lesson. It was meant to entice her, encourage her to gorge herself on self-pity and summon me to her. I chose to use a child to create a measure of distance between us. I did not want to frighten her with immediacy. Besides, it was important that she appreciate her own cruelty. If she is to understand why I have been cruel, she must first be cruel herself.

Things have not gone quite as I hoped, for Sarah remembered the instructions of the book a touch too well. I am not so villainous that I planned to entrap her without first giving her a chance to succeed. No, I realized that would be demoralising. Sarah is not brilliant, but she is determined and she is brave. She deserves a chance to imagine she has won.

She will not realize immediately that she has been trapped. This place will only pull at her after a few weeks have passed. Her hunger will escalate by the hour, and nothing will satisfy it, for there is nothing in the mortal world that can match the sweetness of goblin fruit.

Yes, Sarah will return. Quickly, I’m sure.

I will be watching, but I know I will be saying my final goodbye to Linda Molloy soon.

I imagine she will miss me more than she will miss her daughter.

 

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Sarah has to come to stay with us for her summer holidays, and is ill – poor thing. The sickness is a mystery to all, for it is rooted in magic. Magic is untraceable to mortals, so they are left to puzzle and stutter over its many mysterious effects. The poor girl is currently lying prone and helpless in her bed. So changed.

Linda is away – I know not where – and has been for several days. She can hardly bear more than a few hours in my company when Sarah is here, too maddened by my attentiveness towards her poor, stricken daughter.

Sarah’s responses to me have changed on this visit. Though she is too ill now to speak, she regards me differently. There is fear in her eyes, fear in her stiff, laboured movements as she attempts to move to the far side of her small, quilted bed. I only desire her comfort. I only wish to give her the fruit she craves, but does not know to seek.

She has not said a word on the subject, but I am certain she knows precisely who I am. She must see me so differently now. I am a figure that inspires flight, not proximity. I almost wish things had never changed. I dislike how stiff she is. Still, I am sure the illness is the culprit for her immobility. How things will change when she is well again!

I suppose the enchanted state we occupied – her head against mine, her hand clasped in my own – could never have lasted forever. The only world that promises forever is my own, and so that is the world to which we must return.

Yes, I will tell her tonight. I intend to be polite. I will attempt to ask for her return before I force it.

 

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I chose to speak with her in her dream – it seemed like a romantic touch. She has been dreaming for a long time, and it was simple for me to enter her subconscious world. Its lands are as familiar to me as the corridors of my castle, and they are equally easy to navigate.

Sarah has become a great deal more active in her dreams since her adventure in my Labyrinth. She is less fanciful and not as prone to lying back on fields of sweet, stringy grass and listening quietly as I sing to her. She is quite intent on running from me, which she remains fully capable of doing – in her dreams, at least.

She did not pause long enough to consider that I might have the power to control her path. I eroded the landscape surrounding her as she ran, causing the imagined ground to subside into the void and creating high, looming walls to steer her towards me. By the time she arrived, she was exhausted, her skin flecked with dirt and her hair raddled. Had I not just torn it apart, I might have imagined the world we occupied was real.

Sarah did not fall to her knees before me, which I found both surprising and impudent. Her legs shook almost imperceptibly, but she continued to stand. Though I would have preferred to have experienced pure annoyance, I was intrigued. “You must sit,” I said, gesturing towards a generously cushioned and newly created chair I set immediately behind her.

“No. I won’t.” Her voice was surprisingly resolute. I smiled my thinnest smile. I would indulge her obstinacy, to see if it led to anything of interest.

“You must have questions for me. Please, go ahead.”

“What have you done?”

It was a surprisingly blunt question, sharpened only by the slightest sliver of anger. I offered the simplest explanation I could (for her mind is simple – that of a child, really): that I had been playing games with her mother’s family for several hundred years. That she had been meant for me since birth. That I loved her.

Sarah said nothing as I spoke, but her face betrayed her feelings. I could detect a disquieting blend of disgust, awe and disbelief. There was nothing dreamlike about her expressions, for they were all cut from the hard and unforgiving fabric of reality. Their sheer fleshiness was a joy. While I was familiar with the giggling, adoring child and the mechanical, storybook heroine, I had had minimal experience of Sarah as a complete being. I had only glimpsed the darker facets of Sarah – anger, misery, despair – through the windows of her house, cut off from their true intensity by chilled glass and wooden frames.

There was something exhilarating about watching emotions play madly across her face, just for me.

Sarah schooled her voice into calm before speaking again. “What are you?”

This question proved more difficult to explain, since it demanded an explanation of several thousand years of existence. Still, I tried my best. My kind is formed of desires and passions and wants; we alter as humans alter, and exist only so long as they have a use for us. Being cannier than many of my fellows, I entered the realm of storybooks and moral tales. If humans need anything, they need fiction. I became the wicked, charming king, presenting a compelling kind of childhood horror. I specialised in infants; in particular, children that no one wanted. I needed them because they needed me – my people, for all their ugliness and stupidity, are good subjects because they know how much they need their king. As long as I continue to have them, I continue to have myself.

I explained this to her, using simple language and a kindly tone. While I very much doubt she understood, her final question betrayed no further interest in my nature.

“What are you doing to me now?”

I did not answer, for she would realize soon enough. Instead, I commanded “Come here, Sarah.”

She looked at my warily. “Why?”

“I merely want you to be close to me.”

A harsh shudder passed through her, and her face lost all its colour in a moment. The change was a stark reminder that we occupied a dream; the streaks of dirt that had criss-crossed her face vanished along with the colour. She looked behind her in the dazed, delayed manner of a drugged animal searching for an escape, and then turned her head slowly to look back at me. Her eyes were wide, molten – betrayed.

“What have you done to me?” The question came out as a gasp, her voice suddenly weak and pitiful. I wanted to grab her and pull her to me, but knew she was fading. Of course she was; I made her fade. It took an attempted touch for me to realize she was already waking, fading from me. Fading from life. It was happening quickly. I needed to act.

I looked at her intently even as the outline of her body blurred, determined to pierce the distance between us. “Made it so that we can never be apart.”

Sarah left in the next moment. I chased her to her bed to stroke her red, fevered brow and murmur to her as she sweated. Her eyes were half open and unfocused, her mouth ripe for my attention. I crafted a juice-fattened peach in my hand, pressing it to her lips and urging to bite with my song. I implored her to live, for mortals subjugated by sickness fear nothing more intensely than death.

The bite was feeble, but it broke the fruit’s flesh. The juice eased past her lips, coating them with their sweet flavour. I bent to kiss them before carrying her away.

 

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Sarah does not know what a prize she is. She is turbulent, full of rage and spite and hatred. I love her passions, and care not for their negativity. Even her tears of despair are intriguing, reducing her to a state of pathetic, blubbering incoherence. I hold her as she shakes; I hold her still more tightly when she bleats for her freedom. Every convulsion sends a thrill through me.

I will never return her to the mortal world, and have no intention of returning myself. My games there are complete, the board wiped clean of players and even all the pawns – save Linda. She will dwindle without me, shrink into obscurity and self-pity. I doubt Sarah will be among her regrets. No, I care more for Sarah than Linda ever did. I have done everything for her. The last five hundred years have been building towards her arrival. It is only now I have her that I appreciate that she is the prize I have been striving towards. If only the others were here to marvel at her, to envy me for having won her!

She is crying less now, and has turned her attention to escape. I observe her attempts at flight from a distance, keen to allow them to play out without my interference. She is resourceful, far more so than I ever gave her credit for. Every plan she comes up with is different (yesterday, it involved shredded bed-sheets and pillows strategically arranged beneath the multi-coloured blanket that covers her bed), a sign of the resilience and versatility of her imagination. There is nowhere for her to escape to, so I let her run until she requires protection or is wanted. She is reckless in her thirst for escape, prone to wandering near wind-ravaged cliffs and staring into silvery pools that run fifty fathoms deep. I perpetually ensure her safety, yet every look she gives me claims that she has been wronged. Her eyes still accuse me of betrayal.

With time, I am sure she will come to realize that I am a kind master. She will see that I do allow her flight, even if I limit the distances she can attain. Yes, I am sure we will be happy together. My happiness has already been secured; only Sarah’s awaits.

And I am certain it will come.

 

  
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**Author's Note:**

> I had difficulty assigning genres to this. If I were able to come up with custom genres, I'd probably assign this one to creepy/deluded.
> 
> Many, many thanks for Nienna Telrunya for editing for this for me – as always, her comments and little tweaks have been invaluable.


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